Sydney, Part III (5/30-31)

Sadly, my last day in Sydney was largely a waste.  I slept in again, which was nice, but woke up feeling like I was starting to come down with something.  I just missed the free shuttle downtown, so rather than wait around for the next one I decided to wander Chinatown for a bit.  Most of my time there was spent in a gigantic mall-type area, where, much like Portabello Road, anything and everything a chap can unload could be found.  Unfortunately, either my camera or my general demeanor (or being obviously non-Chinese) identified me as a tourist, and I had at least three different places try to rope me in for an "Asian massage."  I ended up just buying a t-shirt and a few souvenirs for folks back home, then dropping them back by the hostel before heading back downtown.

Since I didn't pay attention to my map and didn't realize how much cool stuff was around Darling Harbour, I decided to go check out the Sydney Observatory.  After walking there from Circular Quay (not too far, but lots of uphill) I got out my camera to take a picture... and discovered that my camera no longer liked my memory card.  I tried restarting the camera and ejecting/reinserting the memory card, but no dice; I had to go back to the hostel and format the card.  Luckily I had just backed up my pictures the night before, so I didn't lose anything, but it was still quite annoying.

Attempt number two at the observatory was slightly more successful.  I got there slightly before 15:00 and realized I had a bit more time to kill before the next tour at 15:30, so I wandered back down a few blocks to where some street vendors had set up food stalls; they weren't much less expensive than the actual restaurants, but I ended up getting a good deal on what turned out to be a pretty darn delicious lamb sausage on a roll.  I made my way back up to the observatory and sat around for another 20 minutes or so, at which point I realized I'd misread the sign out front: entry was free, but all the official tours included a stop in their video room... which cost $10.  I was feeling pretty cheap at this point in my trip, so I decided to just explore as much of the building as I could--most of it, luckily--without being part of one of the tours, and then heading back to the hostel.  It was after the cutoff time for the free shuttle to and from downtown, so I once again made the trek across town on foot.  I did pick some beer on my way back though, and that helped make things not quite so bad.

The early evening was spent getting everything repacked so I'd be ready to head out the next day.  Around 18:30 I joined a couple other guys for dinner (steak & fries for under $10... not the best I've ever had, but fairly good, and incredibly cheap for Sydney) and then Godzilla in 3D at the biggest IMAX screen in the world.  It was really cool getting to see it on such a big screen, but it definitely needed more Godzilla.

Sydney, Part II (5/29)

Manly Beach

The next morning was a Thursday.  I slept in a bit, then joined a fellow American from the hostel for the ferry ride out to Manly Beach.  It was windy as heck on the way, but we got some great views from the deck, and got lucky enough to spot a whale as well... first time I'd seen one in the wild.  The beach itself was really nice as well: nice sand, nice surf (there was actually a surf class going on), and much less touristy than Bondi Beach.  We wandered the extent of the beach itself, through a cave to an area that would have required some serious rock climbing to progress beyond, then back along the beach to a nature trail on the far side.

You have to look really closely, but there's a whale tale in there.

The Cave of Wonders! Or maybe just
a regular cave

The nature trail took us to what seemed like a completely different environment, from sand to scrub, and from palms to pines.  There was very little in the way of wildlife--a decent amount of birds, and a few frogs that we heard but never saw--and not many people either, although we did run into a few guys hitting golf balls from the clifftop into the ocean.

Surfing

Even the short version of the hike turned out to be a pretty decent workout, so we cut it a bit short in the hopes of catching the next return ferry.  It was just starting to rain (not to heavily, at least), which may have had some impact on our decision as well.  We spotted whales on the way back as well, but it went a bit downhill from there.  My map showed that the free shuttle ran late on Thursdays, but the lady at the bus terminal told us otherwise, so we ended up having to walk the 40ish minutes back to the hostel.  Normally that wouldn't have been so bad, but I had just spent all day (and most of the the previous several days) walking around, and my body was starting to feel it.  The worst part?  Later that night, two girls back at the hostel told us that they'd been able to catch the free shuttle just fine, and later than we'd been there.  Thanks bus terminal lady!

Are we still in Australia, Toto?

That evening more than made up for the travails of the day, though.  Dinner was put on by the hostel again, and once again it was way cheaper than I could've eaten out for: $1/each for Aussie dogs (basically just a hot dog inside bread instead of a bun, but they were big dogs and the bread was great) with all the fixings.  After that it was on to the main attraction: Vivid Sydney, a giant festival of "light, music, and ideas."  I joined a few more folk from the hostel and hopped the train down to the harbour for the light show at the Opera House.

Ooooh....

Wow.  Just wow.  The main attraction was the Opera House itself, but lights were being projected onto several other buildings and some smaller installations down there, much of it accompanied by music.  The area was all sorts of crowded, but it still wasn't hard to get some amazing views.

Butterflies?  Okay.

I'm not even sure what this is, but it's cool enough that I don't care.

As if Australia needed more rabbits.  At least these ones weren't breeding.

So I accidentally arrived in the middle of one of Sydney's biggest events.  As I am occasionally fond of saying, luck is just one of my many skills.  I'll just leave this video here for you to enjoy....